By Beth Miller
On a hot, dry, windy June day in Green River, Utah, Mechanical Engineering graduate students Colin Graham and Tim Wray were set to do something they’d never done: send a rocket they had built at least 10,000 feet in the air.
As a first-time entrant in the Ninth Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition, Graham and Wray were representing the WUSTL Rocket Club, which they established on their own in Fall 2013, with their entry, the Wrighton Rocket. Their goal was to send the Wrighton Rocket up at least 10,000 feet while carrying a 10-pound payload, and then have a safe recovery.
Launched from an open area in Green River, the rocket went up about 9,600 feet with its payload. However, the recovery didn’t go as well.
“There are a lot of things that can go wrong with parachutes not deploying or electronics not working,” Graham says. “In our case, the parachute deployed, but the first one was too powerful, and it snapped the cord. Half of our rocket fell, and the other half came back, so we were able to recover our data.”
In addition to the requirements for the rocket, the team had to present a poster and a safety analysis. They were competing against teams from 21 other universities from the U.S., Brazil, Canada and Turkey. Experts from the aerospace industry, including some engineers who worked on the original Tomahawk missile, served as judges, Wray says.
Graham became interested in the contest after taking the Aerospace Propulsion course. He recruited Wray, and the two of them started the WUSTL Rocket Club last fall. Ramesh Agarwal, PhD, the William Palm Professor of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, was faculty adviser on the project.
“Colin and Tim put in an enormous effort to design, build and launch the Wrighton Rocket to achieve the required altitude,” Agarwal says. “Their efforts are truly praiseworthy and laudable, considering the fact that they did the project in their spare time with enormous enthusiasm and dedication and achieved remarkable outcome.”
|
Length |
Diameter |
Launch Mass |
|
|
101” |
4.03” |
557 oz |
|
|
Motor |
Total Impulse |
Burn Time |
Max Thrust |
|
Cesaroni 75mm L1115 |
5017 N-s |
4.47 s |
1713 N |
|
Speed Leaving Launch Rail |
Max Velocity |
Estimated Apogee |
Actual Apogee |
|
99 ft/s |
543.4 mph |
10,010 ft |
9,639 ft |
Overall, the project budget was about $2,000, fully supported by the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science. Graham and Wray are looking to raise funds and seek sponsors to improve next year’s entry.
“It’s been a cool process,” Graham says. “We’ve been able to use all of the tools in the machine shop and learn about all of the materials and machines.
The two give credit to Pat Harkins, technician in the Machine Shop, for helping them make the parts for the rocket.
“Pat was very helpful,” Graham says. “Every part that we machined in there, he had some advice to make it easier.”
They also used Maker Space 12 in Urbauer Hall and the 3-D printer belonging to the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) chapter to create jigs to aid in construction.
Though the club was small this year, Graham and Wray hope to add new members in the coming academic year.
The School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis focuses intellectual efforts through a new convergence paradigm and builds on strengths, particularly as applied to medicine and health, energy and environment, entrepreneurship and security. With 82 tenured/tenure-track and 40 additional full-time faculty, 1,300 undergraduate students, 700 graduate students and more than 23,000 alumni, we are working to leverage our partnerships with academic and industry partners — across disciplines and across the world — to contribute to solving the greatest global challenges of the 21st century.